My coworker was trying to read all of John Steinbeck's books and told me how he took his girlfriend out to Pastures of Heaven after reading it. I got the book from the library and read the book in one sitting and fell in love with something I’m already in love with!

p.49 Miss Morgan

That night, in a letter, she wrote: “After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. The deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind. Life is so unread. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do.”

p.51 Miss Morgan

With a few suggestive words she had been able to make his life unreal and very wonderful, and separated from the stupid live about him.

p.78 Junius Maltby

It’s a strange thing, this knowing. It is nothing but an awareness of details.

p.79 Junius Maltby

They were surprised at the strange fruit their conversation bore, for they didn’t direct their thinking, nor trellis nor trim it the way so many people do.

p.121 Molly Morgan

When her mother died, she felt little besides shame. Her mother had wanted so much to be loved, and she hadn’t known how to draw love. Her importunities had bothered the children and driven them away.

PAT HUMBERT

p.169 Richard Whiteside

The earth gives only one crop of gold. When that crop is divided among a thousand tenants, it feeds no one for very long. This is bad husbandry.

p.181 Alicia Whiteside

Wait a little. Everything will be alright. Wait a little. No sorrow can survive the smothering of a little time.

p.186 John Whiteside

…well, it’s almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing. No matter.

Yes, I was completely taken by the stories in The Pastures of Heaven. Any difficulties I had with the narrator were alleviated by the concept of this piece of literature. I loved the structure and particularly identified with Pat Humbert’s story (149 – 168)..so I was really excited about the idea of this exercise to make Pat's story into a short film